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Comparing the tone of three different "boutique" cables

#121
hilarious test because it's true! i saw through the bs decades ago. i now only buy the cables that are on sale. oh sure, i make sure they're well built, but that's because of the rigors of the road. however, i use those cheap molded cables they sell on ebay for $10 a dozen for my pedals. can't tell the difference with them, either.
 
#122
scotch said:
I wonder if a true ABX test has ever been done by a party other than the manufacturer or paid reviewer? Somehow, I doubt it!
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Extensive ABX test results are pretty rare. I know that they are used by manufacturers. For instance it was reported that Sony used ABX testing to help them develop the "lossy" data compression algorithm for the MiniDisc. I think it's also been used by researchers to determine the thresholds of audibility for effects such as harmonic distortion.

For general use, ABX testing is pretty burdensome. I doubt that most mainstream audio gear is tested in this way, even by manufacturers. For practical purposes, we are left with two forms of testing:

1. Subjective listening and playing. This is easy and trustworthy, in that we will detect whether gear will make us happy or not, but does not address the underlying cause, which may be physical or psychological.

2. Theory and measurements. This requires the gear and the knowledge to interpret the results. It opens the possibility of missing some effect that we don't know how to look for.

Both of these methods fall short of ABX testing, but it's what we are stuck with in the real world. Which one you prefer is up to you. I happen to prefer theory and measurements for things that I can comprehend, such as cables, and subjective testing for things that I don't understand, such as upright basses and bows.
 
#124
Nic. said:
For those guys who talk about things that can't be measured with graphs, why not get some musical signal, send it through the cables, and see how much it differs from cable to cable?
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That's the idea with the 'Pink Noise' Bongo is using. Google "pink noise" for better understanding than I can explain.
 
#125
I know what's pink noise... what I mean is that those guys are gonna be like "Oh you have all the frequencies so it isn't a MUSICAL situation"...

So why not plug it into some recorded bassline and see if it changes that? That should shut them up...

E.g.: Music playing device -> cable -> Recording device

Get a sample with each cable... then is there any software that can analyze the two recordings and show differences? Or simply just invert the phase of one, add them together and see if it cancels out perfectly? (which theoretically it should if there's no difference, right? Just a bit of noise...)


Edit: one more thing- what about noise in cables? Or the effects of chaining many short patch cables together? I've had instances where it does SEEM to make a difference on a pedalboard but now I'm starting to think it was subjective...
 
#127
Maybe this has been said (or maybe not since a lot of people are believing in bongo's graphs) but...

I always marvel at the arrogance of people living in a certain time period...because Oh, we have these fancy frequency response programs and "fast" computers and what not, means we can accurately (i.e. there's no getting better than this folks...ever!) measure sound or whatever else we can think of, with ZERO room for error, and no part of the sound spectrum getting by us...makes me laugh a little actually...

GUYS technology hasn't reached it's peak...it won't in our lifetime and it prolly never will (short of nuclear armageddon/planet killing meteorite/end of days..take your pick)...just like we discovered DNA not to long ago (relatively speaking)...there may be aspects to sound we haven't discovered yet, but our ears can hear it somehow...microphones may be quite "advanced" for now...but they're not our ears.

I'm not taking any side to this argument. I'm not saying ALL of the cable guys are snake oiling us or all of them are right; but to believe we can end such an argument based on a simple frequency analysis, when some people will swear by hearing the difference, is even crazier IMHO...and frankly (being from an audio engineering background), not because you can't hear it and the other guy can, means it's not there and the other guy's crazy...
 
#128
Well, these "fancy frequency response computers" have much more precise readings that one our subjective brains, which don't even achieve 15% efficiency, can give. It's not about "believing", facts are facts, and apparently there is no difference. Also, like someone else added, our brains are not objective to the fullest extent like a computer is. Furthermore, just because a technology isn't at it's peak, doesn't mean it can't be efficient, precise or correct. You do not need your car to have 500HP while doing 200MPG to get to places or get the job done.

I would like to add that your last sentence can be the other way around as well; just because you think you hear a difference doesn't mean it's there. Factually speaking, in this case, it isn't and it has nothing to do with being crazy, au contraire, it has to do with being human and perfectly sane.
 
#131
johndough247 said:
I'm not taking any side to this argument. I'm not saying ALL of the cable guys are snake oiling us or all of them are right; but to believe we can end such an argument based on a simple frequency analysis, when some people will swear by hearing the difference, is even crazier IMHO...and frankly (being from an audio engineering background), not because you can't hear it and the other guy can, means it's not there and the other guy's crazy...
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... and that's what double-blind testing is for.
 
#132
johndough247 said:
...since a lot of people are believing in bongo's graphs...
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That's exactly the opposite of what's going on here. The technology I'm using is well within the budget and opportunity of a large percentage of internet-forum-users. The results I'm reporting can be independently confirmed by nearly anyone, whether cynical or not. "Belief" comes into play when there is no way to objectively confirm or deny something, and it has to be taken on faith.
johndough247 said:
I always marvel at the arrogance of people living in a certain time period...
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That's funny. Which other time periods do you have experience with? And how were they different? Remember, spectrum analyzers with infinite (analog) resolution have been in use since the 1940's.
johndough247 said:
to believe we can end such an argument based on a simple frequency analysis, when some people will swear by hearing the difference, is even crazier IMHO...
Click to expand...
You're positing that there is some quality of audio other than frequency and amplitude. Maybe so, maybe it hasn't been discovered yet. But the qualities of sound waves have been intensively studied since the dawn of "modern" science, and the qualities that have been identified have been so thoroughly tested, duplicated, analyzed, and explored that we can quite reasonably say at least "that which can be observed" has been observed and understood. It's quite clear and well-proven, for example, that one listener will hear sound sample "A" as better than sound sample "B" if sound sample "A" is just a couple dB louder than "B", but otherwise identical. These psychological tricks are well known--and there are a great many of them. You can spend an entire academic career on the subject of psychoacoustics, without even straying from the existing prolific writing on the subject. Does that mean there isn't more to learn? No, certainly not. But it does mean that to go around saying "magic cables sound better because of science we haven't discovered yet" is just sadly, obstinately ignorant of the vast amount of things we do know, that can be independently confirmed by anyone.

And, as has been reported already, in blind ABX tests audiophiles can't hear one bit of difference.
 
#135
i think these last few posts have shown that someone can look at data, any data, and say "that doesn't prove it".
johndough says that he has no side, but imagine somebody that does have a side, and says that the cables ARE better. For whatever reason, whether they beleive the snake-oil, myths, rumors, "their ears", or the fact that they spent 150+ on a power cable, they belive the opposite - and, as you're saying, believing is hearing. And no amount of charts or graphs will prove this otherwise.

Psychoacoustics are that deeply ingrained into us as a species that hears.

(Which ties into the interesting note that it does for other animals, too - a bird can hear a call that is it's own, and will continue to call back even after seeing that the source isn't it's own - it hears it's own. In many ways hearing is more powerful than sight and feel, but this is a statement for anther thread, really...)

rambling thread, but my point is that this is all WONDERFUL data, and i love getting to see it, but i'm also saddened by the fact that no matter how hard you try, psychoacoustics wins over facts most of the time.
 
#138
Florox said:
Well, these "fancy frequency response computers" have much more precise readings that one our subjective brains, which don't even achieve 15% efficiency, can give. It's not about "believing", facts are facts, and apparently there is no difference. Also, like someone else added, our brains are not objective to the fullest extent like a computer is. Furthermore, just because a technology isn't at it's peak, doesn't mean it can't be efficient, precise or correct. You do not need your car to have 500HP while doing 200MPG to get to places or get the job done.

I would like to add that your last sentence can be the other way around as well; just because you think you hear a difference doesn't mean it's there. Factually speaking, in this case, it isn't and it has nothing to do with being crazy, au contraire, it has to do with being human and perfectly sane.
Click to expand...

bringing up the 'brain running at 10 - 15% efficiency...wow, well i guess that settles everything...u do realise that every single calculation done by the computer is something a human running on 10 - 15% told it (i.e. programmed it) to do? not because it thinks faster than us, means it's smarter than us.

500HP car doing 200MPG...sure you don't need it, but guess what you do need? STEERING! sure i'll get to places, but...depending on where u live i'd be pretty much be f****d if i ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time lol. Certain things won't be figured out if u keep thinking in one mindset. (i.e. your supercomputer will still crash your favorite program until the 10 -15% subjectively challenged morons tell it to do otherwise VIA program update)

I think you're missing the point...facts are facts huh? 600 years ago it was a widely accepted 'fact' that the world was flat...can't you even believe for a second that we don't know everything yet? half of the things we have today would have been deemed impossible in the past by people like you who believe everything that you know is "apparently" a "fact". Science has changed its facts all the time throughout history, simply because as time goes on, we learn more and more (and in some cases, less and less...but thats for a another soapbox lol) about ourselves and about the world because our minds (warts and all) have the ability to adapt and change.

I'm not trying to ruffle feathers here, i'm just hoping some will see this from a different perspective...
 
#139
johndough247 said:
bringing up the 'brain running at 10 - 15% efficiency...wow, well i guess that settles everything...u do realise that every single calculation done by the computer is something a human running on 10 - 15% told it (i.e. programmed it) to do? not because it thinks faster than us, means it's smarter than us.

500HP car doing 200MPG...sure you don't need it, but guess what you do need? STEERING! sure i'll get to places, but...depending on where u live i'd be pretty much be f****d if i ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time lol. Certain things won't be figured out if u keep thinking in one mindset. (i.e. your supercomputer will still crash your favorite program until the 10 -15% subjectively challenged morons tell it to do otherwise VIA program update)

I think you're missing the point...facts are facts huh? 600 years ago it was a widely accepted 'fact' that the world was flat...can't you even believe for a second that we don't know everything yet? half of the things we have today would have been deemed impossible in the past by people like you who believe everything that you know is "apparently" a "fact". Science has changed its facts all the time throughout history, simply because as time goes on, we learn more and more (and in some cases, less and less...but thats for a another soapbox lol) about ourselves and about the world because our minds (warts and all) have the ability to adapt and change.

I'm not trying to ruffle feathers here, i'm just hoping some will see this from a different perspective...
Click to expand...

A cable is a cable is a cable.

Hearing a difference in a boutique cable is simply a trick the of human brain and the psychology of brand expectations.
 
#140
johndough247 said:
bringing up the 'brain running at 10 - 15% efficiency...wow, well i guess that settles everything...u do realise that every single calculation done by the computer is something a human running on 10 - 15% told it (i.e. programmed it) to do? not because it thinks faster than us, means it's smarter than us.

I think you're missing the point...
Click to expand...

no John, I think you're missing the point. Have you ever done any programming? The advantage of computers is NOT that they can do more difficult calculations than humans can... the advantage is that they can do them much faster. Consider for example numerical integration. I can integrate a nasty analytical function using Simpson's Rule (the one where you chop the function into pieces and approximate each piece with a parabola) but I can only divide it into say 10 pieces. Thus my answer isn't going to be all that accurate. A computer, on the other hand, can integrate that same function but chop it into 100, 1000, or 10^23 pieces. It can do that because it does those calculations much faster and doesn't mind doing them over and over again, whereas I can only integrate so many times before I get too tired. The computer's answer will be much more accurate because it can divide the function into many more pieces. Another thing - computers don't make careless errors either :)

All that to say: maybe there is new science happening here and there truly is an objectively measurable difference, but there probably isn't. And your illustration was poorly chosen and technically incorrect :)
 

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